Murgle Boiri

Murgle Boiri has spent forty years putting everything that grows in the dark into her mouth.

None of those mushrooms has killed her yet. And believe me, they have all tried. In the Mugrecueva Clan, that alone makes you a shaman.

Her eyes are half shut, her mouth half open, and her grin never leaves, not even in her sleep. Nobody in the clan has ever seen her blink with both eyes at once.

She taught herself. Deep in the cave there is a damp corner the light never reaches. Murgle spent her childhood there. Tasting. Spitting. Giggling. Tasting again.

Three other kids went down there with her. Only she came back. Three lovely mushrooms grow in that corner now, and Murgle lets nobody touch them.

Her mushrooms heal. A little. Just enough for a goblin with an arrow stuck in them to get up, laugh at the arrow and go back to the fight still wearing it.

But sometimes the mushroom comes out weird.

And then whoever eats it hits harder. Or holds out longer. Or runs as if Grumbak were after them. Or spends half an hour staring at a wall.

Murgle sits down beside them and stares at the wall too. She says that wall has a lot to say.

She writes it all down on a strip of bark. Then she eats the bark. That way there is no finding the logic, and she thinks that is perfect.

There is another mushroom that only grows where blood has been spilled. She calls it "the red one" and hands it out before every fight, the way you would hand out sweets.

Whoever eats it hits more often where it hurts. And the clan get a hunger that has nothing to do with food. A hungry goblin does not run. And if one does, they leave a trail of blood behind, and more red ones grow there. Murgle calls it "sowing".

She has spent so many years among spores that she now gives them off on her own. Every staff blow raises a green cloud. For the enemy, everything starts going wrong. For her own, everything goes right. For Murgle, everything goes sideways, but that was already the case.

Magic? Nobody in the clan knows. Neither does she. She calls it "feeling at home", and a giggle slips out.

One night she went deeper than ever to look for mushrooms. It took her three days to come back. She came back barefoot, without her sack, and talking to a rock.

Down there she took the Veil. The clan suspect she ate it. She says it was the other way round. Since then she neither prays to the Light nor obeys the Darkness. She says mushrooms don't either, and look how well they are doing.

Gorruk asks her for mushrooms so he won't be afraid. Blix, so his hands won't shake, though his bombs still land wherever they please. Kritch brings her the ones he finds in his traps, sometimes with the critter still inside. Zagga used to ask for some to shriek louder. Murgle doesn't give her any now. Nobody does. Nobody wants to.

Grumbak once ate the whole sack. He slept for four days. When he woke up, he asked if there were any more. Murgle cried with joy. At last, someone understood her.

She is fifty-two, which for a goblin is very old. She stands ninety centimetres tall, the size of a barrel, and smells like a damp cellar.

And every time one of her own falls, she kneels beside them and puts a mushroom in their mouth. It has never worked.

But Murgle keeps trying. And while she waits, she eats another one. Just in case.